


Shipwrecked

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Canon Compliant, Horror, Humor, M/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While exploring a sunken spaceship, Lister comes across something quite extraordinary... but can he convince Rimmer, Cat and Kryten of what he's seen?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

One thing that could be said for Red Dwarf's diving suits – or, to give them their proper name; Extravehicular Submarine Surveillance Excursion Suits – was that the discomfort involved in wearing it was such that you got whatever you needed to get done while wearing it, done _really rather quickly_. Unfortunately, this was not a job that could be done quickly, and Lister was rapidly running out both of bright sides on which to look, and auxiliary oxygen. 

«I dunno, Krytes,» he spoke into his suit radio, «it's starting to look dim.»

There was a delay of about one second; eons as far as starship radio technology was concerned, before Kryten's voice piped back: «Are you quite all right, sir? I wish you wouldn't speak so disparagingly when Mister Cat is listening; it so discourages him!» 

Lister rolled his eyes, which made them sting; the cocktail of drugs and boosters in his air supply keeping him alive and alert at this level, even for such a short period of time, all but dried them out. «No, I mean it's _literally_ getting dimmer.»

«Ah! That will be your suit visor reacting with the chemicals in the water.» Water was a charitable term, Lister felt, for the soup he was wading through. Part of it was the toxic spills from the downed ship's engines, but most of it was simply the natural state of this planet's oceans. All in all, Lister was glad they hadn't seen any fish. Yet. 

«Already? I've only been down here, what; forty minutes? Half an hour?» 

«Just about, sir; twenty eight minutes point five.»

«I thought you said this suit could keep me going for days!» Lister glanced towards the exit, and found he coudn't. Despite the powerful torch attached to his helmet, and the added light from the smaller ones on the end of his gloves, Lister could not even see the spaceship walls he knew to be only two yards away. He held out his hand to feel the empty space around him, willing himself to breathe slowly. When he couldn't see, it was all too easy to imagine everything closing in. 

«It can keep you _alive_ that long, yes.» Kryten hesitated. «Technically speaking.» 

«Yeah, well, I'm not staying here a moment longer.»

«That's probably for the best, sir. Get back to the breach in the hull; it should be just North of where you are now, assuming we've tracked your movements correctly.» 

North, South; Lister was starting to lose track of which way was _up_ or _down_. For lack of anything else, Lister kept his eyes on the floor. Whenever one foot moved forward, it kicked up a swirl of dust and debris, mixing unhappily with the triple-thick chocolate shake quality of the water. The atmosphere was almost, though not quite as bad, as the bingo halls he used to go to with his gran when he was little. At least there, he'd gotten a second-hand nicotine buzz. «I'll be honest with ya, I'm not sure I can find my way anywhere in this muck.» 

«Just keep moving, sir – I'll have Mister Cat send down a beam flare. With any luck, you should be able to see that from just about anywhere in the ship.»

Lister grunted. His boots kept catching on odds and ends he didn't want to investigate further. This whole thing had been a bad idea to begin with. Yeah, they were short on certain supplies, and sure, from what they could make out at some considerable distance, this certainly looked like a late-model Starbug vehicle, but what of it? There were bound to be other JMC ships out there, dead or lost or buried or drowned or all of the above. It wasn't an uplifting thought, given the circumstances. 

«We're sending the flare, sir. Let me know when you see it!» 

«Are ye sure ye should let Cat do it? Let's be fair; his aim's not the best.» Which wasn't true, exactly; Cat's aim, much like his feline ancestors, was flawless. It was his motivation that was usually lacking. 

«I have to man the radio, sir. The contact we've managed to establish is highly unstable; if I'm not constantly vigilant, we'll lose the signal altogether.» 

«What about Rimmer; what's he doing?»

«Mister Rimmer is monitoring your suit's biofeedback, and radiation screening.»

«Brilliant. That's filled me with confidence, that has.» 

«I heard that,» Rimmer's voice whined. «Bloody typical. You cause _one_ radiation leak and wipe out the entire crew of _one_ starship, and no one ever lets you forget it.» 

«Let's just say I could feel more comfortable.» It was all just words. Lister was hot and tired, and he couldn't see the walls, and his visor was starting to turn an sickly shade of yellowish green. Those words, the familiar patterns; Rimmer's indignant nasal drone, it all helped. 

«The flare should be reaching you now, sir.»

«Really?» Lister tried, pointlessly, to shade his eyes. «I can't see...» But he could, he found. The darkness was, gradually, beginning to fade into a slightly less charcoal-y soup. «No... yeah. It's coming. I think I know which room I'm in. It's definitely a Starbug.» The cramped medi-bay of one, to be exact; even in this mess, Lister could make out the diagnostics bed, with its prominent JMC logo, and the stacks of emergency holo-tapes which had all gotten wiped in the accident. He'd always wondered what was on them. Hey, hang on... «I'm in the medi-bay, Krytes. I'm gonna grab some of these tapes, see if we can't use them to restore the auto-surgeon.» 

«Be careful, sir! Your ESSEX's jets won't be able to carry much more weight.»

«There's another reason why you should have sent me down there, rather than chunky cheeks,» Rimmer's voice chirped in. 

«Like you'd've volunteered.» Lister inched his way towards the rack, trying not to look down. Which, in hindsight, was probably why he nearly tripped over a small, round object. Swearing, Lister looked down, then yelped, falling back against the examination table. 

«Sir!» Kryten was barely audible, and the light was fading; Lister really needed to get out of there, but all he could do was fixate on the sight in front of him, clutching the sides of the table with both hands. «Sir, are you all right?»

«Fine,» Lister managed, half an octave higher than usual. «Fine,» he repeated, a little closer to normal. «Just... I think I know which Starbug this is.» 

He stared down into the swirling murk and debris, at the tarnished object below. It was a light bee. A hard light bee.

* * *

«So what are you saying;» Rimmer snapped, leaning over the console with an expression somewhere between constipation and panic, «that it's somehow... us down there? How is that even possible?» 

Lister waved his hands, warding off Kryten's constant attempts to put cold compresses on his brow. «How I am supposed to know? Maybe it's time travel!» He shook his head, pulling a braid into his mouth. «What am I saying; of _course_ it's time travel. What else could it be; it's us!» 

«Sir,» Kryten insisted, «are you _absoutely certain?_ » 

«Like I said,» Lister sighed, «there were four bodies piled up behind it; that means you,» he pointed at Kryten, «me,» at himself, «and you,» finally, at Cat. 

Cat narrowed his eyes at him. «Wait a minute.» He frowned, holding up his hand, and counting silently, first once, then again. «Me and you and you – that's just three! Who's number four?»

«Krissie, of course!» 

Rimmer slumped down noisily, resting his head against the navi-screen. «Oh, for smeg's sake...»

«Don't ye get it? That _proves_ it's got to be from the future, because she's not here now.» 

«I take it all back,» Rimmer told the screen, «in the face of that faultless logic.» 

«So...» Cat was trying to think, which was never a good sign. «What you're saying is, we shouldn't try to find Officer Bud Babe, because if we do, we'll all end up dead!» 

« _No_ ,» Lister yelled, «that's not what I'm saying at all! That's exactly what I'm _not_ saying!» 

«Begging your pardon sir,» Kryten interjected, «but did you actually recognize any of the bodies?» 

«The bee,» Lister said, with finality. «That was definitely Rimmer's.» 

Rimmer sat up, frowning over the top of the console. «How would you know?»

«Believe me; when you've swallowed something that size, you remember what it looks like.»

«Thanks for that cheerful reminder; I haven't had those particular nightmares for almost a fortnight.» 

«But the others,» Kryten insisted. 

«There was a mechanoid, and three humans. I don't know if they'd been there all that long, but you know what that water's like. I couldn't really tell much, except that one of them was female.» Kris. Dead. Lister chewed at a braid. In the future, sure, but still dead. He couldn't cope with thinking about that, but be couldn't stop. «Could you get anything out of the footage?»

Kryten shook his head. «It's the magnetic disturbance, it's completely wiped the tape. You wouldn't have had much luck with the ones you were trying to bring up.» 

«It doesn't matter; we're obviously going to pick them up somewhere, aren't we? Or they wouldn't be there, now.» Lister looked down at the floor, as though he could see all the way down to his dead, future self. And his dead, future... ex. His head was beginning to hurt. 

«All this is absolutely preposterous,» Rimmer yelled. «I can't be the only hard light hologram out there, and we know Kryten's not the only mechanoid.» He turned to Lister, face falling. _Go on,_ Lister dared him, wordlessly. Rimmer turned his eyes away. «Yes, well... I suppose finding more living... dead... more... you know what I mean, human beings would be a bit of a...» He shrugged, sitting back. Everyone was momentarily lost in thought, save for Cat, who had wondered off when the rest of them had stopped paying enough attention to him. 

«I suppose,» Kryten conceeded, «it might be worth it to investigate further.» 

«How long 'til I can go down again?» 

«In that suit? Not until at least six months of self-repairs. Though I did,» he helpfully pointed out, «throw it right into the nano-tank!»

«We can't just hang around here for six months!» 

«Unfortunately, that's the only working ESSEX suit we've got, sir. I'd go myself, but it would take at least three days for the suit to recover enough even for my requirements.»

«Smegging hell...»

«I suppose, if we had a more durable material; something virtually indestructible; small enough to facilitate movement throughout the ship, but heavy enough to sink; something with built-in radio facilities so we could communicate...» He stopped. 

Lister met his eyes. They blinked at one another. 

«No,» Rimmer said. «No way in smegging hell. Forget about it.»


	2. Chapter 2

An interesting, yet little known about hologramatic light bees is that they sink through muddy ocean water barely faster than a human being does.

Lister watched its – his - _Rimmer's_ decent with the sound turned off, nibbling at a soggy chip. Their dwindling supply of potatoes were decreasing in quality as well as quantity, hence Kryten's mass slaughter of what had to be a good five pounds of them earlier this evening. Rimmer, not that he usually liked to indulge, having a somewhat complicated relationship with potatoes, had spent his dinner arguing rather than eating. Irrationally, Lister couldn't help from thinking he'd have been better off with a hot meal inside him, but of course there _was_ no inside to Rimmer. Unless you counted the bits and bobs inside his bee, but why would you? That'd be like saying Casablanca was made up of magnetic tape. Speaking of which...

«Hey Krytes, d'ya really think he's gonna be able to record anything down there?»

«Pardon me, sir?» Kryten poked his head out of the kitchenette. It was odd being on Starbug again after all this time back on Red Dwarf. That old cabin fever teased at the edge of Lister's frayed mind at every whiff of dead, sanitized air, every sip of water re-cyc; at every bleating, torturously squeaking pipe. _Just for now,_ he told himself. _It's just for a little while; it's easier to get close to the planet's surface this way, is all._

«D'ya think he'll get any footage at all? It'll murkier than a Stout milkshake in that muck, now that I've stirred it up.»

«I don't doubt he will, sir. Due to the space restrictions in its hardware, Mister Rimmer's bee records digitally, and its radiation and magnetic shielding is far superior, thanks to Legion's upgrade I can only presume, to any standard JMC equipment.»

«Digital? What, like old cameras?» 

«Just so, sir.»

«But they stopped using that when they found out it-»

«Not to worry; with restricted use, the risk of contamination is virtually zero! Though I would suggest we gently rinse the recording module in warm water at first possibility.»

Lister wrinkled his nose. «Better you than me.»

«However the problem remains one of transmission. There is considerable interference from the planet's atmosphere.»

«Yeah, well, we can hear him, no problem.» Lister pushed the volume up on the portascreen, and Rimmer's nasal groan reverberated through the cabin:

« _...to do than ponce around sunken ships looking for your dead girlfriend, you've another thing coming! I know you can hear me; you've probably turned the sound off, you smeggy git. Well, if you think that's going to stop me, you're dead wrong, miladdo; I'll-_ »

Lister turned the knob again with a sigh. «I can't really blame him.»

«I can,» Cat yelled from his vantage point at the top of the storage lockers.

«Get off there,» Lister groused, «yer not as young as ye used to be. Ye can't just drop seven meters straight down and expect to land on yer feet anymore.»

«What do you mean?»

«Never mind.» Cat didn't seem to understand the concept of aging. To him, time was simply _now_ , streching on forever; an eternal moment, in which he was the obvious center of attention. To be fair he didn't look much older. Unlike other people he could name. Lister sighed. 

«So what's the thing?»

«What thing?» 

«The thing! The thing that's coming! Font Face was saying-»

«Right, right!» Lister was in no mood. The view was obscuring more and more as Rimmer fell. «That's not what he meant; the stupid gimboid got the saying wrong. It's not 'thing', it's 'think'. Isn't it,» he yelled in Kryten's direction. 

«Isn't it what, sir?»

« _You've got another think coming._ »

Kryten tilted his head. «I do? But I had my last one just this January! I should be fully upgraded to Brainspace 4.1. If you like, I could run some diagnostics-»

«Never mind.» Dragging the unplugged charger cord behind him, Lister carried the screen into his old bunk room. It might not be easier to think in there, with the smell and the empty walls and memories of who weren't there, but it'd be quieter.

* * *

For a shuttlecraft, Starbug was impressively roomy. Lister had, with careful optimism, started calling it the TARDIS a few weeks after they'd been forced to live there semi-permanently, until Rimmer's confused glaring got to him. There had, therefore, been no problem getting separate quarters, and somehow, on the little lander, that had been more important than on a mile-long ship. Lister could find his way to his old digs with his eyes closed, mostly because he frequently had been forced to, and knew how to kick the door shut with one boot so that the locking mechanism kicked in without having to press the Door Close panel. He did so now, trotting over to slump down on the disused bunk. He'd been right; it _was_ quiet in here. Dim, too; enough that the portascreen read more easily in the gloom. 

Oh, smeg it. Lister turned the volume up. 

Silence. 

Uncertain, Lister shook the screen. Sometimes, with these distances, you got a lag. Nothing. Swirly, dusty, nothing. Lister cleared his throat. _Smeg it_. 

«Rimmer?»

Still nothing. All right, maybe the lag went both ways? He pushed himself deeper into the bunk, until his feet dangled off the edge. 

«Rimmer?» Lister realized he was whispering. Had he been, all along? He raised his voice slightly. «Rimmer?» 

Nothing. The void wasn't static; you could see that, in this light. Little particles moved in the water; tiny peas of light in a mushy stew of darkness. 

«Rimmer?» Kryten had made the bed, of course. Lister buried his hand in the duvet, picking at the over-starched cover. «Rimmer?» 

Still not loud enough, probably. He'd had a helmet with speakers on, when he'd been down there; Rimmer just had his internal radio. What did that feel like? Someone's voice coming out of you, like they were talking inside your guts. Did it tickle? Who knew what Rimmer could even feel? Right; one last go. Lister inhaled deeply, bracing himself against the back wall, and belted out a:

« _Rimmer_ -»

« _Shut the smeg up!_ » The reply was immediate, sharp and metallic, like Rimmer was speaking inside a metal can. And he was, Lister supposed, in a disturbing number of ways. «I'm trying to concentrate!» 

«Can you actually see anything in there?»

«Not with you chattering my ears off, no!» 

«But ye can see?»

«Yes... no. Sort of. I think my bee must have some kind of sonar equipment. Smeg knows what Legion crammed in there; it's not on the JMC list of standard equipment, I can tell you that.» 

«Sonar? Like seeing with yer ears?» 

«I don't know; it feels... I can't begin to think of a way to describe it. Like being tickled from the inside out. I hate being tickled.» 

There was a mental image. «What can ye see... I mean hear... feel?»

«I don't know! Why do you think I told you to shut up; I'm trying to learn how to use an entirely new sense, here. Give me a moment!» 

Lister shut up. The image on screen – Rimmer's point of view – barely moved, but Lister thought he could hear little breaths and wheezes. Was Rimmer trying to breathe under water? He'd be able to; it was all just a sim. But he'd feel the water; feel it in his nostrils, his lungs... 

«I think I've got something.»

Lister sat up. «What? What can ye see? Is it Kochanski?»

«It's bloody always Kochanski with you, isn't it? Did you ever consider that this ship could  
be virtually _anything?_ A science vessel; a diplomatic envoy ship; a library! The wonders of the universe could be hiding in this mud, and all you can think about is your ex girlfriend.»

«I'm telling ya, it's Starbug. It's us.»

Rimmer ignored him. «She's not dead, Lister. She left for a reason. Did it ever occur to you that she might not want to be found? If memory serves, she wasn't overly thrilled about it the first time.»

 _Don't rise to it,_ Lister told himself. «Just tell me what yer seeing... sensing. Whatever.»

«Not much. It's hard to make out any details. Oh.»

«What?» Rimmer's voice had dropped, then stopped abruptly like it had hit a wall. «Did ye find something?»

When the answer came, Rimmer sounded further off, like a bad radio connection. «I think I've found the bodies.»

* * *

«You're absolutely certain they're dead bodies, sir?» Kryten leaned carefully towards the portascreen's microphone, as though Rimmer would be able to hear him better that way.

«I know a corpse when I see one, Kryten; I've been one.»

«Technically, sir, you haven't. As a holographic projection, you-»

«Never mind all that,» Lister pulled the screen towards himself, almost wishing he'd stayed in the bunk, «can you describe them?»

«I'm not sure. I'm still getting used to this... whatever it is. It's like trying to read a hand-written recipt at a Mimas dive bar.»

«How many are there?»

«Four, like you said. And a mechanoid.»

«Hang on! I said three. _Three_ bodies, and a mechanoid. And yer bee.»

« _A_ bee. And I can't find that anywhere. It must have been something else.»

«It was your bee, Rimmer!» 

Kryten gently nudged Lister aside, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. «Can you get a DNA sample, sir?» 

«Oh yes, of course! I'll just use my incorporeal fingers to dig into this partially decomposed body, then carry it back to the surface in my insubstantial arms!»

Lister jostled back into position, feeling silly. It really didn't matter where he was standing in relation to the screen, but it felt like it _should_. «Can't ye turn back into hard light?» 

A drawn-out, staticky sigh sounded over the link. «Listy, I realize this is a high tech concept, so try to keep up: You've anchored my bee to Starbug using something called 'string'.» 

«Actually,» Kryten interjected, «it's a highly flexible plasticrete polymer, woven into long strands.» 

«Right,» added Cat from his vantage point, «string!» 

«This has to be an all time low for you, Lister» Rimmer smarmed, «outwitted by the bafflingly named _Felis Sapiens_.»

«I know what string is, Rimmer.»

«Good; then you'll appreciate what will happen if I turn back to hard light with it running through the top of my head.» 

«At least that's not where your brain really is,» Lister snarked, avoiding the mental image. Holograms could feel pain. «Did none of us really consider the fact that he might want to bring back samples?» He shook his head. No wonder, perhaps, considering the fact that they were basically using Rimmer as a fishing line. Mickey Mouse operation didn't quite cover it anymore; at least Disney characters tended to have some semblance of a plan for what they were doing. 

«It would not have been feasible either way, sir; a solid Mr. Rimmer would have been too heavy to safely lift with the polymer-thread without added propultion.» 

«Fine,» Lister rubbed his head, «whatever, just get him back up again. At least we've got the footage.» 

«Hang on,» Rimmer cut in, «I'm starting to get the hang of this – I think I can make out the face of whomever this is. Sort of.» 

Lister leaned forward, grabbing the edges of the screen. «Who is it? Is it Kris?» 

«No.» Unexpectedly, there was no quip. Just Rimmer's quiet, settled voice. «It's Lister. It's you.»


	3. Chapter 3

Lister pressed the rewind button and leaned forward against the screen to watch once more. Again, the slate grey and green mess that was Rimmer's sonar recording of the... of what _might be_ Lister's future corpse scrolled in front of him. Again, it was completely indecipherable.

"I don't know," he said, cradling his chin, "it just looks like a wobbly green blob." 

Rimmer frowned. "Really? You can't see it?" 

"No! Are you telling me you can see my face in that?" 

"Of course!" Rimmer pointed an agitated finger at the lower left corner. "There! That's your ear. That's your left eye. That's your nose." 

"Rimmer, those all look exactly the same." Green and grey, and sort of... blobby. 

"They all look the same on your face, miladdo." 

"Perhaps," Kryten suggested, setting down a tray with mugs of hot chocolate discretely, "Mister Rimmer's electronic brain has become attuned to the sonar data, enabling him to make sense of it in where organic human brains cannot."

“All right; I’m not arguing that’s not me down there – I was the one saying it would be, remember? That’s not the question; the question is: what does it _mean _that I’m down there?”__

The Cat sauntered in and snatched the mug Rimmer was reaching for. "It means you're all gonna be dead, bud."

"All of us – that includes you!" 

Cat shrugged, lapping daintily at the cocoa. "No one's seen me down there." 

"We've seen me, and we've seen Rimmer, _and_ Kryten. There are three more bodies."

"I know I'll regret saying this," Rimmer groused, "but say one of them is Kochanski."

"Of course one of them is Kochanski!"

" _Yes_ , but my point is this: If one is Kochanski, and the other is Cat, who's number three?" 

The little room grew quiet, save for the tiny, wet sounds of Cat's rapidly moving tongue.

* * *

Lister had given his own death a lot of thought - that was the sort of thing you did when faced with a combination of deep space and deep depression. Secretly, he had always held out hope that one particular future echo had been right, and that he'd live to at least the age of 150 or so. Still, you had to go sometime, didn’t you? Lister knew better than anyone that holograms weren’t really the same person as the one they were emulating, for better or worse. Besides which, he’d never understood what good it did – for example – a guy trapped in the intake valve of the Ramscoop shaft to know that while he’d be blown to atomic dust in just a few seconds, and would never wake up again, a computer program and a bunch of photons would come online a few days later thinking they were him. Sure, some people argued that it was the same as falling asleep at night and waking up in the morning; you couldn’t technically tell if you’d died and been resurrected during the night; but the important thing to remember about that, was that those people were twonking smegheads. Lister had never quite managed to whittle down a list of his favorite ways to go, but 'Future murder by persons unknown' would certainly not have been in his top ten. It was hard to argue with the facts, though. He'd tried to get Rimmer to pin down the age of the body he’d seen, but 'somewhere between 40 and 70' was not particularly helpful. That meant Lister had between... minus two, and thirty years in which to prepare. 

"Smegging perfect," he muttered, dragging his feet around the bunk room. He wasn't going anywhere in particular; there didn't seem to be much point when he knew he'd be dead in however many years. OK, so had technically always been true, but there was something about the certainty of having _seen_ \- possibly even bumped into, the way he'd stumbled around down there - his own corpse that could put a dampener on anyone's day. Month. However-long-he-had-left-to-live.

He stopped by the fridge, wondering if it would be worth the bother getting drunk. Maybe that was how it would happen? He'd get drunk and forget his cockpit shift, lose Red Dwarf again and send them off to smeg knows where. Maybe that's how they'd find Kochanski again. Lister swung the door open, blinking at the little light inside. Rows of Leopard Lager cans (refilled with urine re-cyc) filled the entire upper self, most with the labels half-scraped off. Lister had once heard that peeling labels meant you were sexually frustrated. He sighed, and grabbed the nearest can, kicking the door shut with his boot. _Well yeah,_ he thought, settling on his bunk with head down and his legs dangling off one side, _maybe it would be worth it._ So what if he they were all going to die; who said it was going to happen right after they found her? It could be years and years later; maybe decades. He wasn't twenty five anymore, not even thirty five, and not exactly taking care of himself properly. _Let's get real_ , he thought; how many years of quality life did he have left, tops? Lister grimaced as he swallowed down that bitter brew. Then he took a sip from the can. 

You could change your future, sure enough. The question was, did he want to?

* * *

When Lister finally made it back to the mid-section, Rimmer was still writing angrily on the ancient whiteboard (which they'd recently discovered was actually a top-of-the-line-three-million-years-ago intelliboard which no one had been able to figure out how to use), furiously underlining an all-caps sentence. Without his glasses, which he generally avoided wearing, Lister couldn't tell what he was trying to write. Come to that, seeing the actual words properly might not help much. "Anything," he asked, half-heartedly. 

"Nothing yet, sir. But Mister Rimmer has made quite a few very interesting suggestions!" 

"Stop encouraging him," Cat growled. "He's scribbling so hard I can't sleep!" 

"All right," Lister poured himself into a chair, finishing the rest of his fourth can in one long sip. "What have we got? Keep it simple, mind; I’ve got a headache coming on.”

“We all know you have a simple mind, Listy.” Rimmer had paused to rub his wrist. It would be too easy to quip about how he might have strained it, so Lister didn’t. Maybe later.

“In short,” Kryten intervened, “we’ve narrowed it down to engine malfunction, sabotage by person or persons unknown, bacterial or viral infection, and…” he glanced nervously in Rimmer’s direction. 

“Say it,” Rimmer warned, his fist tightening around the long-suffering marker. 

“Aliens,” Kryten muttered quickly, looking away. 

Lister couldn’t even be bothered to shake his head. “Not this again. Come _on_ , man.”

“Is it really so ridiculous? Is it? We’ve traveled between dimensions, back and forth in time, split ourselves into good and evil counterparts, fought sentient wax droids-”

“ _You_ fought sentient wax droids; the rest of us just wanted to leave them the smeg in peace!”

“Don’t interrupt; I’m on my way to a point here!”

“Goiting hell…”

“We’ve altered the course of history, been attacked by creatures who feed off emotions, been impregnated by our female dimensional alternates-“

“Rimmer, I’m not in the mood.” Not this. Not now. He wasn’t drunk enough, by half. He was _never_ drunk enough to remember this. 

“You were then, weren’t you?”

“ _Get to the smegging point._ ”

Rimmer dropped the marker. Kryten coughed, a little too politely, and distractedly began wiping excess pen marks from the side of the board. The Cat rose, nose twitching, and quietly left the room. Lister realized he was heaving for breath. He couldn’t remember yelling, but his throat hurt. “Sorry,” Rimmer said, making it worse.

“Just… just…”

“All right; OK.” Rimmer sat down in the chair opposite, his voice unusually quiet. He’d started looking younger lately, which he said was normal; that in a few days he’d revert back to 31. Lister didn’t usually pay much attention to what Rimmer looked like, but then Rimmer was rarely looking at him quite like this. Open. Almost entirely without snark. Unsnarkily? “All I’m saying is, we’ve been through some pretty strange things, yes? Are aliens really that unthinkable? Compared to…” He clamped his mouth shut, waving a hand carefully, lest it imply something offensive. Lister swatted it away.

“Compared to male pregnancy?”

“Well… yes?”

Why were they talking about this? Why was _Rimmer_ talking about this; like he cared, like he wasn’t trying to get a rise out of him, or intentionally hurt him? Nearly twenty smegging years and he’d not so much as mentioned the subject, out of basic human courtesy, Lister had assumed. Why now? What _was_ this? “Men get pregnant all the time,” he groused. “Just not on Io.” 

“Granted, but, and I think you’ll find this a fair point, not men _without a womb_.” Kryten coughed loudly from the back, and Rimmer rolled his eyes. “I’m no trying to get a rise out of you. I’m just saying…” But judging by the look in his rapidly blinking eyes, Rimmer had no idea what he was saying. 

“It’s OK,” Lister said. He couldn’t quite work out if he were lying, but Rimmer had reached across and put a weightless hand on his, and that was quite enough for Lister’s brain to process right now. “We’ll figure it out.” He wasn’t sure if he were lying about that, either.

* * *

“I’ve managed to reconfigure one of the scouters to work under water,” Kryten exclaimed, interrupting what was quite possibly the least cheerful meal in Lister’s life. Considering that he’d once had to resort to slurping McDonald’s ketchup packets curled up in his locker on Mimas, this was saying something. He could have done with some of those for these cold, re-fried chips, come to that. 

“Bad luck, Krytes,” he grumbled, licking his fingers and trying to pretend the grease tasted vaguely of named, not generic, fat. “That’s not water down there.”

“A figure of speech, sir. It will disintegrate within minutes, naturally, but I believe it may last long enough for us to get some samples from the… erm… the…” 

“The bodies?” 

Kryten shook his head, clearly barely holding it together. “I just can’t stand thinking about it; you, left there all alone and helpless and rotting away!” 

Lister winced. There was another cheerful thought. “You’re down there too.” 

“I know! I should have saved you; I clearly failed! And now look what happened; some horrible… sme… _smeeeee_ ”

“Kryten, calm down, man!” 

“Nnnnggg…. k….killed you all! Some alien monster infiltrated the ship, and I couldn’t protect you. I think it’s clear what needs to be done.” He straightened his back and pretended to take a deep breath. 

“What,” Lister asked, knowing he’d regret it. 

“You are going to have to shut me down, sir.” 

“Eh?”

“Shut me down. Fry my motherboard and throw my spare heads out the airlock. I can’t fail to save your life if I’m not here. It’s the only way.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Was there despair-squid ink mixed in with all the muck in these waters? What was it with everyone suddenly getting all emotional? As most people who lived with their hearts precariously balanced on their sleeve, Lister was used to feeling things. Yeah, he might go to pieces when his favorite beer glass did the same, but he tended to stay calm when simulants attacked or sentient curries tried to kill him. Kryten, on the other hand, seemed never quite to know what to do with emotions, possibly because he wasn’t meant to have them. “Come on, tell me about the scouter modifications.” 

“I helped!” Cat peered out from the kitchenette door, preening. 

“ _You_ helped?”

“The idea was, sir,” Kryten managed, “to enable the data collection systems to detect and transmit pheromones.”

“What; smells? That’s the samples yer looking to collect?”

“There wouldn’t be much time for anything else; the scouter would disintegrate before it could resurface. It likely would not even reach the… the…”

Lister waved his fingers encouragingly. He wasn’t about to say ‘bodies’ again and trigger another meltdown. “The…”

“The… things we’re getting the samples from before breaking down completely. But it could pick up particles in the surrounding water well before then.”

“But hang on; you can’t smell anything under water! I’ve seen dogs try often enough.” 

The Cat snorted. “Dogs. What do they know; they wag their tails when they’re _happy._ That’s why he came to the expert!”

“It is my hope that Mister Cat might be able to analyze the scent particles and-“

“- _smell_ who’s down there?” 

“You got a better idea?” The Cat arched a well-manicured eyebrow. 

Lister glanced towards the crew quarter section. Rimmer had been missing since this afternoon, locked in his old quarters. Lister rubbed his hand. “Nah, man.” None he’d like to consider all that closely.


End file.
